The present disclosure relates to patient support systems such as patient beds and integration of other equipment with such patient support systems as well as with other healthcare communication systems and hand hygiene systems. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to integration of a catheter monitor into such systems.
Patient support systems, such as patient beds, used in healthcare facilities such as hospitals, long term care facilities, nursing homes, and the like, oftentimes support patients that are catheterized. Some such patient beds even have attachment points for urine collection receptacles such as Foley bags. In more recent times, catheter monitors have been developed to gather and monitor data regarding urine flow, volume, temperature, and the like. The catheter monitors are oftentimes used with kits that include catheter tubing and other disposables.
Patient beds that connect to a network of a healthcare facility to transmit bed data, bed alarms, and patient nurse calls to the network are known. For example, patient beds that send data to a nurse call system of a healthcare facility are known. Nurse call systems sometimes have nurse call system servers that are networked to other servers, such as an admission, discharge, and transfer (ADT) server or an electronic medical records (EMR) server, of a healthcare facility. Thus, bed data is able to be shared with other servers or systems in a healthcare facility. When patients are catheterized, it is desirable that they remain in bed. Thus, it is preferable that bed exit systems of patient beds are enabled when patients are catheterized. Currently, caregivers need to remember to manually enable a bed exit system on a patient bed when a patient is catheterized.
Based on the foregoing, caregivers may appreciate integration of a catheter monitor with a patient bed so that improved connectivity of the catheter monitor data to other healthcare information system results and so that improved alarming, caregiver monitoring of catheter monitor data, and improved compliance with healthcare protocols also results. Bed operations and protocols may also benefit from use of data from an integrated catheter monitor.